pictures and commentary by Mongoose

Some caps from 1994's "Invisible:The Chronicles of Benjamin Knight." I could watch movies like this all day long. For some reason this makes me think of the old Six Million Dollar Man TV show. Ya got yur invisible man and yur sexy lady scientist and the crippled guy with his cybernetically controlled "Mandroid" battling the evil scientist who wears a metal mask to hide his disfigured face. Cool. This was filmed in Romania so maybe this young lady is Romanian, I don't know. The very beautiful Dana Magdici in some skimpy shots. (Scoop's note: well, if she isn't Rumanian, she's walking around with an awfully Rumanian name! I think -escu and -ici are probably the most characteristic Rumanian endings. She is a beautiful woman, whetever her provenance, and the image quality is quite good for such a cheesy flick.) Daniela Nane is our second mysterious eurobabe. I've decided that the internet is rotting my brain away...the only descriptives I can come up with for lovely naked actresses these days is "beautiful" or "gorgeous." The gorgeous Daniela Nane...skimpy. In these pics the gorgeous, beautiful Daniela Nane is getting her tit felt up by the deformed hand of the evil scientist.

Found this vid in a dank musty cellar beneath a used record store. "Assault on Agathon" (1975) is about a CIA team after a drug dealer/terrorist leader in Greece. The big mystery to me is why this flick was ever released on video. There was teeny little nip slip of Marianne Faithfull in the tub. Fair quality vid...primarily for those who collect everything. Marianne Faithfull at 33.

Nastassja Kinski in the 1984 movie "Harem." Another old video I found somewhere. Nasty plays a Wall Street stockbroker who is drugged and smuggled away to the palace of a megarich Middle Eastern prince (Ben Kingsley). I usually like movies with mystical or mythical themes but not this time...too romantic for me. Here Nastassja's in the harem baths. I threw in an unknown naked extra for good measure.

Another old horror vid from the back of one of my closets. "The Legend of Blood Castle" (1973) is yet another retelling of the life/legend of Elizabeth Bathory. Elizabeth believed that by bathing in the blood of young virgins she could retain the beauty of her youth. Unfortunately for the peasantry, Bathory was an aristocrat, so several hundred young Hungarian maidens died to provide Old Lady Bathory her bath water. A good movie if a bit slow moving. 42 year old Lucia Bose plays Elizabeth Bathory taking a blood shower. Hard to see the good parts. The reason I own this video is because it has Swedish megasupereurobabe Ewa Aulin in it. Here she is taking a bath in a big ol' wooden tub. I couldn't help but think about what a pain in the ass it would be to fill that tub and empty it later. I bet they used the same water for weeks and weeks. Anyway...a tiny, tiny little nipple peek in the fourth frame (put on your reading glasses). Ewa's beautiful and gorgeous as always.

Found this old rental tape of "Texas Detour" (1978) and was happy to discover that the video quality was actually pretty good. No need to worry about a plot, since it takes place in Texas, Scoop's stomping ground, you can rest assured that it contains rape, robbery, nudity and hot rods. Priscilla Barnes is in bed with Patrick Wayne. It's hard to see anything. Finally! Some clear nudity. Well ... boobs at least. Priscilla Barnes topless. Luc Besson's 1988 film "Le Grand Bleu" or, more properly for this version, "The Big Blue," being that this is the American version. I had forgotten how much I once worshipped Rosanna Arquette. IMHO, when this movie was made she was the planet's hottest woman. I have this bizarre idea that if you morphed Jennifer Love and Sarah Michelle together you'd get Rosanna. Yup, I'm pretty weird, I think about crap like that. No nudity in "The Big Blue" and since Rosanna's done plenty o' nudity in her illustrious career, it may seem silly to make caps of a wet bra scene but here it is anyway. A peek at a wet see-through bra. "The Big Blue" would be a wonderful movie even without Rosanna's presence. I was shocked to see that the European version is about 40 minutes (!) longer than the American version. What the hell is missing? If you've seen both please let me know by emailing me at mongoose@runmongoose.com My web page is at http://www.runmongoose.com

Members' bonuses. "Five Easy Pieces"

People once talked about "Five Easy Pieces" as if it were a great movie. It isn't. In some ways it is absolutely excellent. About three or four scenes just crackle with wit and creativity. In some other ways, however, it is rather poor.

Jack Nicholson is a trained concert pianist who drops out of the educated class to live a working class life on the oil fields, but he can't seem to find any values that match his own in either class. In a very touching monologue he tells his dad (who has had two strokes and may or may not understand), that "I move around a lot. Not because I'm lookin' for somethin', but because I'm getting away from things that get bad". There is also the famous cafe scene where Nicholson finds a way to order wheat toast even though it isn't on the menu. (He orders a toasted chicken sandwich on wheat, "hold the lettuce, hold the tomato, hold the mayo, hold the chicken")

The Nicholson character walks through the movie with no respect or consideration for anybody, even those who seem to earn it, and our identification with him is quickly eradicated by his negativity and his own poor self-esteem which he turns on everyone else. It has an especially nihilist 70's ending where everything is unresolved and perhaps even worse than ever, although I think that is probably the right ending for the movie.

For a movie that was admired by the critics, it is just filled with time-wasters. We see about half a ping-pong game point by point. We see cars pulling up the entire length of extended driveways, or driving aimlessly down roads and into gas stations and cafes. Unlike the modern conventions of "I'm hungry" then a cut to a scene in the cafe, this movie shows the car moving in real time, people getting out ... Yawn! You could probably knock about 15 minutes off the running time without anyone even noticing. But that wouldn't make the movie work for me, either. Remember in college when you really had about 100 words worth saying on a paper that was "10 pages or more", but your point was, in fact, really a germane and original point that John Stuart Mill would have been proud of, so you had to stretch it out with bullshit and hope that was OK with the prof? That's exactly what this movie did. It just suffers from a great 10 minute premise stretched out to 100 minutes, and it bullshits us through the rest with characterization. The premise is so good that the average prof will still give it an "A", but I'm a harder marker.

Sally Struthers and Jack Nicholson had an absolutely wild sex scene which can't be captured all that well because everything was moving so fast. You probably remember Sally as the daughter in the groundbreaking TV series, "All in the Family". Not a beautiful girl, and a really irritating voice, but a most impressive chest. That was some pretty splendid and real passion in that scene. Karen Black, on the other hand, just showed a hint of flesh here and there under her uniform or her nightie. Susan Anspach, disappointingly, showed nothing.

This is a link to a really thorough summary of the movie, if you care to read more.

Karen Black

Sally Struthers

Members' bonuses

Friday

Members' bonuses. "Five Easy Pieces"